A Room of One's Own Study Guide

A Room of One's Own Study Guide

Virginia Woolf was an English writer and literary critic. She was the leading figure of the modernist literature of the first half of the 20th century. Her works became the classics of the “flow of consciousness.” And her essay “A Room of One's Own” became the classics of feminist critics.

The essay is based on two reports called “Women and Fiction” that Virginia Woolf presented in October 1928 at two women’s colleges. In this work Virginia investigated the problem of the professional realization of a female writer, revealing to the reader those difficulties that women had to face when they were making their way to the literary field.

The main idea of this famous essay is that a woman needs money and her own room if she is going to write fiction. She draws attention to two main obstacles in the way of women who wants to succeed in writing or any other kind of artistic creation. These barriers are an economic dependency and human prejudice against women.

Angry about her own lack of education and limited personal freedom, Virginia approaches many feminist problems in the text such as women’s lack of access to education as well as their economic and social dependence on men. A woman has not been considered as a character for a long time. Therefore, the writer has to meet not with the cold indifference of the world, but with the hostility caused rather by attempts to step onto the field of activity previously occupied only by men. With equal in destructive prejudice women have to meet to this day.

“A Room of One's Own” is considered an art form that exists at the intersection of fiction and journalism. It has all the features of a fictional story with all its inherent elements: the narrator, social and spatial-temporal parameters, characters, situations, portrait, and landscape.

The article concludes with an appeal to young students, encouraging them to enjoy this freedom of the law, not paying attention to the constant attempts to diminish the importance of women undertaken by society.

Author: Leona Watson

New Essays

A Room of One's Own Quotes with Page Number

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” — — “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” — — “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” — — “Women have...

A Room of One's Own

Some of the critics argue that Wolf way of writing scrambled the ideas that were supposed to be taken from the essay. Others believe that the style in which the essay was wrote had no affect on its meanings involving women and society. Such beliefs lead to never-ending discussions on one of the...

A Room of One's Own

We learn through comparing both texts that in order to obtain truth, both genders' perspectives must be taken into account Wolf, a constitutional suffragette, empowers women writers by first exploring the nature of women in fiction, and then by incorporating ideas of the androgynous mind and...

A Room of One's Own Summary

A week ago, the narrator crosses a lawn t the fictional Sobering university, tries to enter the library, and passes by the chapel. She is intercepted at each station and reminded that women are not allowed to do such things without accompanying men. She goes to lunch, where the excellent food and...